This 0.1 version is primarily a developer release, which means that itfocuses on architecture and infrastructure rather than finishwork. The exception to this is privoxy-freedombox, the web proxydiscussed in previous updates, which people can begin using right nowto make their web browsing more secure and private and which will verysoon be available on non-!FreedomBox systems. More information on thattool at the end of this post.

A big part of the vision for the !FreedomBox project revolves around the "Boxs", tiny plug servers that are capable of running full size computing loads cheaply and with little use of electricity. In many respects these are wireless routers given the brains of a smart phone. If you want to change the software on a router or smart phone today you normally need to worry about bootloader images, custom roms, and a whole collection of specialized build and install tools. We wanted to the !FreedomBox to move beyond this fragmented environment and, with the help of some embedded device experts, we have managed to make our [[https://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx|development hardware]] into a fully supported Debian platform. That means that anyone with a device can install Debian on it just like a laptop or desktop computer. This support is very important for ensuring that the work we do on the !FreedomBox is as portable and reusable as possible.

There is a lot of great free software out there to choose from and we put a lot of thought into which elements would be included in our basic tool kit. This includes the user interface system "plinth" that I outlined in a [[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/721744279/push-the-freedombox-foundation-from-0-to-60-in-30/posts/260995|recent kickstarter update]] as well as basic cryptography tools like gpg and a one named "monkeysphere" that leverages gpg as an authentication tool. All of these are now bundled together and installed on the release image. This common working environment will simplify development going forward.

* New targets: !CubieTruck, i386, amd64 * New apps in Plinth: Transmission, Dynamic DNS, Mumble, ikiwiki, Deluge, Roundcube, Privoxy * !NetworkManager handles network configuration and can be manipulated through Plinth. * Software Upgrades (unattended-upgrades) module can upgrade the system, and enable automatic upgrades. * Plinth is now capable of installing ejabberd, jwchat, and privoxy, so they are not included in image but can be installed when needed. * User authentication through LDAP for SSH, XMPP (ejabberd), and ikiwiki. * Unit test suite is automatically run on Plinth upstream. This helps us catch at least some code errors before they are discovered by users! * New, simpler look for Plinth. * Performance improvements for Plinth.

Some goals of the !FreedomBox can be accomplished with one user and one !FreedomBox but many, like helping someone route around repressive government firewalls, will require groups of people and groups of boxes working together. One of our greatest architectural challenges has been finding a way for boxes to communicate securely without so slowing down or breaking network access as to make the system unpleasant to use. We have now [[https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth/tree/santiago/ugly_hacks/santiago|outlined]] and built the first version of our proposed solution: Freedom-buddy. Freedom-buddy uses the world class [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_%28anonymity_network%29|TOR network]] so that boxes can find each other regardless of location or restrictive firewall and then allows the boxes to negotiate secure direct connections to each other for actually sending large or time sensitive data. We believe this blended approach will be most effective at improving the security and usability of personal-server communications and all the services we plan to build into those servers.

* Tor Bridges: All boxes now act as non-exit Tor bridges, routing traffic for the Tor network. * [[FreedomBox/Manual/Firewall|Firewall]]: firewall is on by default and is automatically managed. * Add !BeagleBone support. We now have images for !BeagleBone, !RaspberryPi, !VirtualBox i386/amd64, and !DreamPlug. * Ability to enable and use Tor Hidden Services. Works with Ejabberd/JWChat and ownCloud services. * Enable Tor obfsproxy with scramblesuit. * Drop well-known root password (an account with sudo capabilities still exists for now but will be removed soon). * Switch to unstable as suite of choice for easier development. * Newer images are built with systemd by default (due to Debian change). * Install and operate firewall automatically (uses firewalld). * Major restructuring of Plinth UI using Python3, Django web development framework and Bootstrap3. Code quality is much better and UI is more polished. * Introduced packaging framework in Plinth UI for on-demand application installation.

Our first service, a piece of software you can use today to start making your web browsing more secure and private, is called "privoxy-freedombox". This software combines the functionality of the [https://adblockplus.org/en/|Adblock Plus]] ad blocker, the [[https://easylist.adblockplus.org/en/|Easy Privacy]] filtering list, and the ([[(https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere|HTTPS Everywhere]]) website redirection plugin into a single piece of software to run on your !FreedomBox. Combining these different plugins into software for your !FreedomBox means that you can use them with almost any browser or mobile device using a standard web proxy connection. Because of our focus on building the !FreedomBox as part of Debian this software will soon be available to anyone running a Debian system regardless of whether you are using our target !DreamPlug hardware, a laptop, or a large rack server somewhere.

As you read this packages should already be available in the [[http://www.raspbian.org/|Raspbian]] repositories, which is the optimized version of Debian used on the Raspberry Pi hardware. Hopefully we will get that onto the main Debian mirrors over the next month; if you are interested in building it for yourself in the meantime, the source is available from [[https://www.gitorious.org/freedombox-privoxy/freedombox-privoxy|gitorious]]. As we build additional components for the !FreedomBox we will continue to work on making them widely available.

As you may have seen, our Project Lead, Bdale Garbee, is about to begin a well earned [[http://www.gag.com/bdale/blog/posts/Early_Retirement.html|early retirement]] from his long time role as Open Source &amp; Linux Chief Technologist at Hewlett-Packard. Over the coming month Bdale and the rest of the Foundation team will be putting together plans for the next stage of !FreedomBox development and the road to a 1.0 release. News and updates will follow at [[https://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/|freedomboxfoundation.org]] ([[https://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/index.en.rss|rss]]).